Pat Frank - Mr. Adam

“I must have a dill pickle!” Marge repeated. “If I don’t have a dill pickle I shall go mad. Stephen, go to the delicatessen at once and get some dill pickles!”

“But, Marge,” I protested, “that’s absurd. We can’t break up the game just because you have a sudden yen for a dill pickle!”

“Stephen, you hate me, don’t you? But I must have a pickle.”

“I think,” Maria interrupted quietly, “that you had better go get a pickle, Stephen.”

So I trotted around to the delicatessen and bought some dill pickles. “Don’t slice them,” Marge ordered when I got back. “I want them whole.” I expected her to devour them whole, on the spot, but she bit into one, nibbled at a small piece of it, and then shoved them aside.

“Is that all you want?” I asked, indignant at all the trouble for one puny bit of pickle.

“That’s all,” she said. “Whose deal?”

I looked at Maria and Tommy. Obviously they were puzzled. Perhaps startled is a better word. Particularly Maria. “Darling,” she asked Marge in a soothing voice, “do you often get a sudden hankering for a certain kind of food, like that? So you feel you must have it, absolutely must?”

“She certainly does,” I said, “at the oddest hours.”

“Shut up!” Marge told me. “Shut up! Haven’t I any privacy in my own house?”

Tommy didn’t say anything. He began to deal the cards. Maria kept her eyes on Marge, a queer, puzzled expression—you might call it compassion—shining out of her small dark face.

And then, in perhaps thirty minutes, Marge got up from the table, and slipped on her coat, and said, “You people will excuse me for a few minutes, won’t you?”

“Where are you going?” I said. “Marge, we’ve got company. We’re playing bridge.”

“No, Stephen, I’ll go myself,” Marge said. “I don’t want to bother you. It’s so much trouble for you to go out and get something for me.”

“Now, Marge,” I said, “just tell me what you want and I’ll get it.” I found that I was afraid if she went out she would not come back. I recalled all the stories I’d written in my life about wives who got up from the bridge table, or left a cocktail party, and turned up at Bayonne, N. J., or Birmingham, ten days later with a beautiful and impenetrable amnesia.

“I was just going out and get some lemons,” Marge said. “I’ve got a frightful craving for lemons.”

“Aren’t there some in the refrigerator?” I said.

“No, I’m afraid I ate them all,” Marge said. “For days I’ve been devouring lemons. Dozens of them.”

Maria said, as if she was repeating a witch’s incantation, “Pickles and lemons, lemons and pickles.” She touched Marge’s arm and said, “Dear, I want to see you alone for a moment, in the bedroom.”

“But my lemons,” Marge said.

They went into the bedroom together. “What do you think of that performance?” I asked Tommy. I was shocked, but at the same time I was glad it had happened, because it gave Maria and Tommy such a perfect insight into the strange things that had been going on in the Chez Smith.

Tommy hunched his enormous shoulders and let his chin sink on his chest. “There’s something in the back of my mind,” he said.

“Don’t you agree,” I said, “that there is something wrong, mentally? These wild whims for food—and the jealousy. Of course you won’t get a chance to see her when she starts accusing me, because she won’t do it until you’re gone. But it’s really pathetic.”

Tommy shook his head. “She’s not crazy,” he said. “She’s emotionally disturbed, but she’s not crazy. There’s something pushing against her subconscious that gives us these symptoms. Brought into the open, they’d probably disappear. I just can’t imagine what it would be, unless—”

“Unless what—”

“Skip it,” Tommy said brusquely, and then Maria poked her head out of the bedroom door, and said would Tommy please come in for a moment. She sounded excited. Tommy went into the bedroom, and shut the door behind him, and my imagination began to play a rhythm of fear and apprehension inside my head.

Now you could see, I told myself, that it was serious. Maria taking Marge into the bedroom, like that, showed that she suspected something. And calling Tommy into consultation showed that she wanted him to confirm it. Once I thought I heard a sound like a frightened squeal. They remained in the bedroom for what seemed an unreasonably long time, although probably it was no more than fifteen minutes, and by the time they came out I was pacing the floor, a drink in my hand, and my hand was shaking.

I began, definitely, to hear noises from the bedroom. It sounded like Marge’s laughter, but it was probably groans. Then they all came out, in a silent, tense little line, like the first three coming out of the jury room. Maria was first, Tommy second, and Marge last. If I remember correctly, they were all crying, or laughing, or both.

They walked over to me and Tommy took me by the shoulders and said, “Unless we are both mistaken, and we are both willing to stake our reputation on it, Marge is going to have a baby!”

I remembered staring down at the shattered glass that I had held in my hand, and the pool of soda bubbling around it. I found that Tommy was holding me up. “Stephen!” Marge said. “Stephen, what’s the matter?”

“He’s out on his feet,” Tommy said. “He’ll be all right in a second. Bring him another drink.”

I drank it, and I looked at all of their faces and I could see that they weren’t joking. For a long time all I could say was, “Impossible!” and then I sat down and began to think.

I thought very rapidly, and asked how long Marge had been pregnant, and Maria said about two months—probably a little longer—and I ticked the months off on my fingers, backwards, and arrived at Marge in Washington—with Homer Adam. Marge said, “I know just what you’re thinking, Stephen Decatur Smith, and it isn’t so. You’re a suspicious, dirty old man.”

“Oh, my,” I said, “if it wasn’t Homer, then who was it?”

“Him!” she said. She put her arms around Tommy’s neck and kissed him on the mouth.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t him,” I said. “He’s in exactly the same shape I’m in. You can’t fool me, Marge. It was Homer. I can’t say that I blame you. If you really want a baby, that was the only reliable way to have one.”

“Oh, you darn fool,” said Marge. “You don’t understand at all, do you?”

“Naturally, I don’t understand. What husband ever does understand?”

“Shall I explain?” Tommy asked.

“No, I’ll tell him,” Marge said, “although I really shouldn’t. I really should let him think it was Homer.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “From now on I can take anything.”

“It was Tommy’s tonic—that seaweed stuff. It worked.”

“Ha-ha. Ho-ho,” I laughed. “I didn’t take any!”

“Oh, yes, you did,” Marge said. “You took a whole bottle. Do you remember that day in Washington you felt so bad? That day I spiked all your drinks, and the next morning I poured the rest of it into your coffee.”

“My gosh,” Tommy interrupted. “You were only supposed to give him forty drops a day. That’s powerful stuff!”

“I know,” Marge said, “but I wasn’t going to be in Washington long, and so I gave him the whole bottle.”

I felt affronted and outraged, as anyone does who discovers that somebody has been tampering with their food or drink. “You might have killed me,” I said. “From now on I suppose I’ll have to have a taster in this house.”

Maria looked at me, almost in wonder. “But she didn’t kill you,” she said, “and you’re going to be a father!”